Archives for July 2012

Some time ago, culture and technology experts predicted a major shift in the way Americans use and access the web. Asia was far ahead of us in the trend away from deskbound machines and towards increasing use of handheld devices and mobile phones. That trend started long before the iPhone or the iPad but it wasn’t long before more Asians connected with a mobile device rather than with a desktop computer.

With faster broadband networks, iPhones, iPads and Android, North America has finally caught up with Asia. Around 25% of U.S. internet users are now mobile only. And research shows that American consumers prefer mobile devices for banking, travel, shopping, local information, news, video, sports and blogs.

I admit that it took some time for me to catch up, but…it did happen. The great majority of my web browsing now happens on either my iPhone or my 7″ Android tablet. And just as the statistics show for the majority of U.S. consumers, I prefer to bank, shop, read news, watch video and access blogs on my mobile devices.

I pay for coffee with my Starbucks app. I deposit checks at Bank of America by scanning them with my tablet. I queue up my Amazon shopping cart on my iPhone. And almost everything important is stored on the cloud so I can access it via Evernote or Sugarsync on any mobile device (or desktop computer).

So what’s ahead? First, companies and ministries need to optimize their web presence for mobile devices. That means developing apps for iPhone, iPad and Android and it means optimizing web sites for tablets and phones. By 2015, mobile web surfing is estimated to overtake desktop web surfing. Companies large and small cannot afford to be left behind, but 79% of large online retailers still don’t have a mobile optimized web site.

Second, businesses and organizations need a mobile social media strategy. With 81% of mobile users browsing the web for social networking, it should be a key part of any mobile communications and marketing plan. Identify ways to engage core constituencies with your message and keep them informed about your products or ministries and the stories behind them.

Even before the events in Aurora, Colorado, I wasn’t planning on taking my middle school boys to see The Dark Knight Rises. I have never enjoyed the dark direction taken by the Batman franchise…it just seemed over-serious, mean-spirited and cruelly-pointless to me.

That’s been true almost since the launch of the first film franchise in 1989. Tim Burton’s Batman was a conflicted millionaire with a conscience, but the director restrained himself from plumbing the depths of darkness and evil that would characterize later sequels.

Each successive film and director pushed the violence (and psychotic villains) farther away from camp and closer to the ultraviolence we associate with the most deviant criminal behavior.

Comic book fans will say that the films mirror the darker tone set in some versions of the comic book series. That may be true, but I have always been a fan of the campy. I enjoy reruns of the Adam West television series from the 1960s. People laugh at me when I mention that today. Is that a reflection of my naivety or a commentary on our growing insensitivity to violence?

Jenny McCartney in The (UK) Telegraph writes this about the opening scenes in 2008’s The Dark Knight:

The film begins with a heist carried out by men in sinister clown masks. As each clown completes a task, another shoots him point-blank in the head. The scene ends with a clown – The Joker – stuffing a bomb into a wounded bank employee’s mouth. After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man’s face is filleted by a knife, and another’s is burned half off. A man’s eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man’s stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes. A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic.

That description is about the precursor to this month’s Batman movie. The Dark Knight was released four years ago, but its themes of intense cruelty and psychotic violence are continued in the 2012 installment.

It should come as no surprise that a disturbed man embarked on a killing spree reportedly dressed in black with hair dyed blood-red. At a movie theater showing The Dark Knight Rises, he entered through a fire door he had previously left open and then set off a stun grenade before opening fire with three guns, killing 12 and injuring 58.

Violence, murder and mayhem at a film about violence, murder and mayhem? Imagine that. No need you say? It’s already happened in Colorado.

Read the full 2008 Jenny McCartney article in The Telegraph, but be warned, it’s graphically ultraviolent.